Posted
by
Hemos
on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:39AM
from the consolidation-to-continue dept.

Several readers wrote to note Larry Ellison's comments about launching an Oracle Linux Distro (great! yet another!) and that Oracle has/is also looking at purchasing Novell. The great shake-out continues.

Better yet, just imagine how this would have some serious impact on our friends at SCO? They thought they were taking on IBM, and Novell got into the mix, but with an acquistian by Oracle you would have SCO up against IBM and Oracle -- two heavy weights. To really make it painful, Larry Ellision is not known for being a nice business man.

I'm not too sure what Oracle would do here, but look at it from Oracle's Standpoint. They Don't like IBM (more Specifically IBM's DB2). Novell's sitting on patents that could theoretically swing the SCO Linux debacle both ways. Linux is one of IBM's big assets, and IBM is moving a lot of their platforms from AIX to Linux. If they buy Novell, they may just swing on the SCO side just to get at IBM to slow them down and spend money in the process.

And it doesn't stop there. kicking Linux also gives MySQL a pot shot since most of their installs are Linux installs. Also a lot of their other competitors run on Linux software. If Oracle wanted to do the evil thing, they could side with SCO and set Linux back for a while and give their competitors headaches.

On the other hand, Siding with IBM gives MS a kick in the groin. So it really comes down to who Ellison hates more in the end. Right now, I'm pretty sure it's Microsoft.

We ditched Red Hat when they dropped their free distribution in favour of Fredora (really, what business wants to rely on a distro with a version life cycle of a few months?)So we went to SuSE because it had a longer upgrade cycle. Why am I filled with dread the moment I read the title, why can I see Oracle doing the same with SuSE that Red Hat did with it's distro - the free one becomes their test version with the public as beta testers.

I think it more likely that the opposite would be true. It is unlikely that Oracle would focus on the OS as a revenue stream *directly* rather as an enabling technology for the rest of the stack they already sell. Naturally there would be the ability to buy support for th OS itself so that would add some value.

Not saying you didn't made a good choice but there are free enterprise grade Linuxes. Centos is a redhat enterprise recompile.

Yeah, I've never liked Red Hat to begin with, so I was actually happy to be allowed to switch away from it during the whole Fedora switch. Of course I was a little bitter that I had just built a 50 node computational cluster using RH 9 about a week before they announced the discontinuing of the free distros.... sigh.

This is why I abandoned SuSE after using it for over 3 years. It looked completely and utterly unstable in terms of whether it was going to be supported tomorrow and in the same fashion as it is today. Now, of course, nothing has probably changed in that regard, yet. However this continued churn doesn't bode well for the future.

Umm Oracle Financials [oracle.com], the complete design and implementation, full Java front end, a complete dev environment [oracle.com]... So they have an application dev environment, and all the applications they put out, now including PeopleSoft.

Oracle supports Novell / Suse, Asianux and RHES as it stands now. [oracle.com] As well as doing code contributions back to the kernel. Admittedly this is predominantly to do with their clustered file system, and some of the memory allocation stuff, but still, it's better than some. They also run a number of their servers on Linux as well. They would have to have one of the biggest commercial Linux installations around at the moment.

So; they are doing application development on Linux, Linux kernel work, supporting the operating system through 3 or so distributions and a number of iterations thereof...

Really, why not just buy Novell / Suse and take their staff who can help to support it, and who are doing exactly that now?!?

RedHat and SuSE are the usual "enterprise" distros that have tweaks for running Oracle, but Redhat dominates. wonder how threatened RedHat would be if Oracle bought and pushed SuSE. Oracle has had a problem in the past four years of trying to make integrated features that really were best left to third party, like for example oracle filesystem and oracle clustering, which are shakier and more trouble to admin than 3rd party.

RedHat and SuSE are the usual "enterprise" distros that have tweaks for running Oracle, but Redhat dominates. wonder how threatened RedHat would be if Oracle bought and pushed SuSE. Oracle has had a problem in the past four years of trying to make integrated features that really were best left to third party, like for example oracle filesystem and oracle clustering, which are shakier and more trouble to admin than 3rd party.

RedHat threatened? How about Sun Microsystems?

Back in the day, Sun's Solaris was the target for Oracle. Every other platform was a port of it, and reportedly not as good. I've only used Oracle on Solaris for big and important DBs.

I've thought for years that Oracle should be an OS because an Oracle box is not going to be doing much else anyway. Oracle has its own filesystem, redundancy, clustering, you name it. Many of Oracle's "big boy" features are blurred between what an application does and what an OS does. Its common that the first thing you do when you install oracle is modify the OS to allow for Oracle to work. Most importantly, its the shared memory parameters of the OS that needs to be modified (or at least used to as of version 10).

Having an Oracle OS seems inevitable. With Linux its more than possible.

"Oracle has its own filesystem, redundancy, clustering, you name it. Many of Oracle's "big boy" features are blurred between what an application does and what an OS does."Yes , but compared to what an OS does thats still high(ish) level stuff. An OracleDB doesn't catch hardware interrupts, doesn't set the data bus up for DMA, doesn'tnegotiate plug & play , doesn't in fact do any really to-the-metal type stuff. Justbecause Oracle does a few OS-ish type things , don't for a minute assume its anythingclose

Yes , but compared to what an OS does thats still high(ish) level stuff. An Oracle DB doesn't catch hardware interrupts, doesn't set the data bus up for DMA, doesn't negotiate plug & play , doesn't in fact do any really to-the-metal type stuff. Just because Oracle does a few OS-ish type things , don't for a minute assume its anything close to being an operating system.

I'm basing my opinions of being a Solaris admin who has worked closely with Oracle DBs to get the OS right for doing the Oracle DB.

That's true, but at one time I recall Larry Ellison touting the notion that Oracle's DB could end up being an actual operating system to compete with Windows. That was related IIRC to the concept of Windows having that database-like file system that Microsoft has never gotten working.It never happened, but I suspect something like that is in the back of his mind when he contemplates running his own Linux distro.

In other words, tightly integrating the Oracle database and development tools into the Linux OS w

Sun sells Linux with its boxes if you really want it. and they are perfecting libraries to allow Linux apps to run on Solaris, in a vm-like partition for isolation if you want it. So Z just see Sun continuing to be an Oracle partner even if an Oracle distro comes out, just as Oracle will still sell Oracle for Windows and all the other major OS.

I sort of agree with you, but if I were Oracle I'd be much more interested in OpenBSD, wouldn't you? The license is much better for a company that wants to take the code and wrap it around a big proprietary product.

I sort of agree with you, but if I were Oracle I'd be much more interested in OpenBSD, wouldn't you? The license is much better for a company that wants to take the code and wrap it around a big proprietary product.

Honestly, I would use a BSD licensed product over a GPLed one, but Linux is a little more trendy now.

Mirapoint sells "mailservers in a box" which uses BSD derived systems and some GPLed software as well, I believe. I think their spam filtering is Spamassassin, and their OS is FreeBSD. I've work

Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of the IT companies don't get Linux and OSS.

Hint to Larry (and IBM, HP, Novell, etc): Work together on a single distribution of Linux if you want to get rid of Microsoft. Commoditize the OS and make your money providing services and software on top of it.

Work together on a single distribution of Linux if you want to get rid of Microsoft

I don't think their goal is to get rid of Microsoft, per say. When you buy an automobile, you have the choices ranging from sedans to minivans to heavy duty trucks. Does the Ford F350 really "compete" with a Honda Civic? Does a person purchase a vehicle and decide between the two of those? Not for the most part. For the most part, I've seen IT professionals pick the right tool for the job. When I need to deploy a Microsoft solution, it's usually because it's the best fit for the job. When I need to deploy and Linux solution, it's usually because it's the best fit for the job.

IMHO, there are very few instances where and educated IT professional could actually have to compare a MS or OSS solution in the same way a car buyer would compare a Ford F350 and Honda Civic.

I don't think their goal is to get rid of Microsoft, per say. When you buy an automobile, you have the choices ranging from sedans to minivans to heavy duty trucks. Does the Ford F350 really "compete" with a Honda Civic?

I think you miss the point. The reason that M$ has been wildly successful ("success" being defined by the fact that they own > 90% of the desktop space) is that they came out with a standard way to interface with the underlying system (yeah, I know -- 16/32 bit API's. Still...). To my

Still, if you want to dislodge M$ and have far greater desktop penetration, you need to have a standard to which various vendors can write.

I guess this is the idea I'm questioning. Is Novell/IBM/Oracle/HP/'s goal to "have far greater desktop penetration"? I don't see that. The server/networking environment is the bread and butter for these companies. I think their goal is to get an easy to install, point and click, stable distro for their servers which also gives the System Admin the ability to tweak a

But seriously, the ability to mold the environment for your individual needs is something I can only do in Linux. The desktop? I don't see that as a big concern. We pay $99 for an OEM copy of XP. It's the SQL Server / Windows Server 2003 / Visual Studio licenses that kick our a$$.

Yeah, but then there's the Office Licenses too. And Photoshop. And AutoCad, and other apps that you can only seriously run on Windoze. Those all cost big $$$ as well (and IIRC, the next Office version will virutally require an

Hint to Larry (and IBM, HP, Novell, etc): Work together on a single distribution of Linux if you want to get rid of Microsoft. Commoditize the OS and make your money providing services and software on top of it.

You don't even have to work together. Just identify the items that would prevent YOUR company from migrating to Linux and work with various teams focused on those areas to bring them up to where YOU would feel comfortable deploying it.

No sane person wants to get rid of Microsoft. Eliminate Ballmer maybe, but not Microsoft. Competition is good, and aside from Microsoft's redefining terms like "downtime" to appear competitive and obfuscating configuration tools (e.g., tools like Exchange, Active Directory, the IIS metabase) Windows is a good choice for a good number of people. The costs need to come more in line with its real value and maintenance and configuration tools need to improve to bring the true TCO in line with other operating s

SuSE is starting to be come fragmented from so many changes. Oracle would only be able to further complicate SuSE development. There have been many core changes since Novell bought SuSE and if gives SuSE that patched together feeling. Companies can't keep doing this to SuSE customers. SuSE customers need a stable reliable platform to develop upon.

"We're missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux."

Ladies and Gentlemen, Larry Ellison proudly presents -- Orix!

I for one am not jumping on this bandwagon, because Larry is driving and I don't think he has one hand firmly on the wheel as it is. This is a shotgun marriage and isn't liable to make Oracle any more competitive with Microsoft in the forseeable future. He should have probably done this 5 years ago.

Over the last month or so I've been demoing ZENWorks (for desktops). "Out of the box", installing the management component of zfd on Linux (OES/SUSE), it installs sybase as the backend for the inventory database. Documentation describs how to configure the inventory system to use Oracle and MSSQL on Windows, with ODBC. This is undocumented on the Linux side, which might indicate its not possible to use an alternative DB, or at least that its not supported.Novell Audit, out of the box, supports MySQL, which

You overreacted. KDE is still very much supported on SuSE. Why jump ship based on a rumour of what someone might possibly do when you can just as easily jump ship later if they ever actually do it. I am on OpenSuSE 10.0 now and the water is just fine.

Years ago I was worried that what I was doing did not have much of a future and was looking at retraining doing something else. In the end I decided to carry on with what I was already specialised in and cross that bridge (retraining) when I came to it. I am still working on the same platform 20 years later, still worried that it is going to run out at some point but have noticed that some of the alternatives I was looking at back then no longer exist.

1) Best in class business desktop
-Best desktop: LinuxWorld best business product
-Focused on the business user (vs the Novell Gnome focused desktop that is more all-purpose / home user market)
-Designed to provide an easy transition for Windows users (vs all of the other distros - more below)

2) Best in class Linux "business" server
-The new Xandros server offers the print serving, file serving, network management needed to run small businesses. I
-Provides unique capabilities (apart from Microsoft) that would instantly differentiate Oracle from all the other "me-too" Linux players
-Designed to provide an easy transition for Windows users (vs all of the other distros - more below)

3) Better strategic fit
-Xandros is a pure play in the Linux area and would not come with the "hair" and unwanted, sub-leading products that Oracle would pick up from Novell (and have to pay for)
-Xandros comes on top of the Debian server architecture. This would be an immediate and powerful win for Oracle to pick up the Debian Server base.
-Top business focused engineering team with long track record of efficient engineering (that delivered the award winning Corel Linux Desktop)
-Xandros was founded as an Simple Compatible replacement for Windows and Microsoft solutions that would provide an easy transition for Microsft users. Compared to the other Linux distros that have been laboring hard to create a new better product albeit alien to the marketplace. This company has not deviated from this strategy (plans for this server were announced years ago).

Well, I'd disagree with your (otherwise valid) reasoning for one issue - Novell has a world-class network admin software (Zen, I believe) and a whole host of people still running NetWare. I think from an Oracle perspective, that would be more tasty than a desktop like Xandros (which I haven't honestly tried) that is percieved to be more of a home-based system.

Xandros is a modified Debian - not a totally separate distribution like SuSE (I know, they stopped the mixed-case capitalization, but I like the dropped u). So, "buying" Xandros really wounld't be the same thing. They wouldn't really be getting a whole distro, just a team of people who modify someone else's distro. Xandros would not necesarily be "bad", but with Novell, they'd get the actual point of origination for a distro. And Novell has a bunch of other cool stuff beyond SuSE, like the zen managemen

It's not the software that's being purchased here, it's the expertise and customer base. Every SW company acquisition that I've seen happen ended with throwing away, heavily modifying or rewriting software that came with the deal, sooner or later. Which kind of tells you that it's not software that was being purchased, but people and customer base.

1) Oracle doesn't care about the desktop - have you looked at Oracle Forms? Hello VB circa 1995.2) Oracle's not trying to replace Windows servers with this, they're looking to provide a transition from Solaris to low-cost x86 hardware. As for configuring other services, you just don't run other services on your Oracle box. By the same token, being suitable for 'small business' isn't really a concern here.

3) You've got this one - Novell's got their fingers in too many pies, but you're still thinking of th

Not only would purchasing Novell bring them are large set of customers, it would also give them a team of business consultants. It's not all about the software. It's business strategy. Why would they buy a distro when they can also have a team of experts to deal with linux customers?

Rumors of a Novell buyout by Oracle were pre-empted today when Redhat officially announced their aquisition of Novell.

It seems, though that all may not be lost for Oracle. Redhat has indicated that Novell will sell off their Suse division before the Redhat-Novell merger is completed.

"We have been trying to work this deal for a long time," said the head janitor at Redhat's Sao Paulo, Brazil offices. "Why do you think we ejected 'Fedora Directory Services'? We're ready to push eDirectory to its full potential!"

Officials at Oracle did not comment. But a chair was heard smashing against a wall in Redmond, WA.

This is a great idea. All of the Oracle installations I'm currently managing are running a version of Linux. This requires that not only do we need a good dba, but a linux administrator to maintain those machines. Luckily, we have other linux machines so we didn't need to hire a new guy just to manage the new linux boxes. With the new Oracle Linux Distribution, Oracle would provide the support, updates, etc for the OS, so we wouldn't need to have a full time guy to test software upgrades with our curren

so we wouldn't need to have a full time guy to test software upgrades with our current Oracle installations, or to troubleshoot errors

LOL. You've never worked with Oracle software have you? They have a very hard time releasing patches, much less testing them. I've spent dozens of hours on the phone with RH, IBM, Oracle, etc, and Oracle are the _last_ people you ever want to due to their gross incompetence and intentional disregard for anything you might know or claim to know.

So far I've done several fresh installs and 2 upgrades from 8i to 10g in the past quarter. Everything has run rather smoothly. It'd be nice if the OS was already pre-configured to support Oracle. Since the boxes only run Oracle, and no other software, I wouldn't mind using an OS which was fully supported by Oracle, so I wouldn't have to call RH, or look up solutions on Google.

Why would Oracle want Novell? A company like Oracle could knock up a Linux distro in a short time but why bother when they could just cross-license for a fraction of the cost. Do they want the residual Novell netware customers? Unlikely. Is it just a case of "because we can"?

But when Novell and IBM have finally kicked The SCO Groups butt, Novell ends up with a clear legal right to Unix. A paranoid person might wonder if Oracle is after Unix for some reason.

Brand recognition. 90% of Oracle's business comes from suits that sit in their office and say, "We need Oracle to drive the DB for this project!" Even suits that have previously negotiated and paid Oracle's licensing before.

Oracle could buy/use/exploit any of the hundreds of Linux distros, and the result would or could be about the same. Picking one of the top two Linux distros known in the business world seems to make sense. Would you really think that picking something cal

The bigger issue for Oracle isn't Linux, it's Novell's Identity Manager product - it's the best in the market. Oracle has been buying a lot of companies in the space, so they have 3 (or is it 4?) products, none integrated, with no clear future direction for folks buying a product.

Oracle has been going to a lot of trouble to shove Novell's IDM out of shops by pressuring sites to switch to their identity management product lately.

Of course, this could just be "Crazy Larry" trying to get IBM to blow a lot

OK let say Oracle buys Novel. The first thing they could do, is use their much more substantial and well funded coral of land sharks in Novels fight against SCO. OK now lets say they win. Now Oracle can say they own UNIX IP outright.

And now we get SCO round 2, but with a far more powerful and well-funded bank of land sharks.

... before Oracle heads down yet another purchasing road, I'd like to see something done with their marketing and sales group - something consistent with the fact that this company is no longer only a database company. My suggestion would be to fire them all and bring in people who are willing to learn and be flexible, instead of the entrenched backbiters they have now.I'd like to see the user communities that formed around COREid, Xcellerate, and other identity-related software get some support corporatel

It contains one discussion group for all of the Identity Management. Which is lumped in under "Application Server" for some unfathomable reason. Which means you have to parse through all of the products to figure out which threads are for the product you yourself are using.Here is the summary of the single discussion group:

The #1 thing that Linux gives to users (that they value highly) is choice of hardware and software on commodity (read: Intel or AMD) platforms. From a commercial subscription market share perspective, it's just about game over; Red Hat is up there in 90% plus land with SUSE collecting almost all of the few remaining crumbs.

To date, Novell is stronger on PR (Google search volumes on "SUSE" are almost at Red Hat levels) but are struggling really badly to monetise this.

I used to be a CNE 3/4/5 before Novell became almost irrelevant, but this is the first news I've heard that they might be bought out by another company. Many people have said that Novell's fall from grace was their own fault, but knowing Microsoft, in the end I don't think their was anything Novell could have done about it.

If Novell does get relegated to the history books, I'll be sorry to see them go. I still like the way NDS (um, eDirectory) works and would love to see an open source alternative to it

...for many reasons. Principally so he can lay waste to the most incompetent fucknozzles ever to wear a suit.
Internal slogan:
"Novell: The leading provider of useless managers"
Sharpen that axe Larry and call me for I have a little list....

I blogged about this today: the next step in the commoditization of operating systems: application and tool vendors include the operating system and every thing in one complete software stack.

This is not as crazy as I might have thought a few years ago because of virtualization tools like Xen (etc.) However, if companies like Oracle start selling the 'whole stack' I hope that they offer versions that are built for Xen.

I have installed and operated several production Oracle db's on both RedHat and SuSE. SuSE is by far superior for Oracle. SuSE supports Oracle much better than RedHat does. It's much easier to install Oracle on SuSE, and SuSE has a very nice mailing list for Oracle dba's, with moderators from both companies. So in this sense, SuSE is a much more attractive acquisition target for Mr. Lawrence "Gotta Have It" Ellison.

Several years ago (circa 1999 or Redhat version 6 ), I read that Oracle on Linux was developed and targeted for Suse. I remember this because I was having issues tweaking RH for an Oracle 8 install, and a lot of the mail lists mentioned that some of the tweaks were not necessary for SuSE. So I would guess that it would be just a bit easier for Oracle to adopt Suse outright, if that is what their developers are already using.

I have installed and operated several production Oracle db's on both RedHat and SuSE. SuSE is by far superior for Oracle. SuSE supports Oracle much better than RedHat does. It's much easier to install Oracle on SuSE, and SuSE has a very nice mailing list for Oracle dba's, with moderators from both companies.

Not only that, but SuSE is a much better platform for DB2 as well. Most of the IBM systems I've worked with are almost always SuSE SLES, even though RH was an option. If nothing else, they could mess u

I'd prefer IBM buy Novell than Oracle. It'd be nice to see IBM be a software company again, and they have the marketing presence to put a real dent in Microsoft's market share. Once that happens not only will Linux become much better supported by both commercial vendors (I'd LOVE to see the Adobe Creative Suite and Ulead's media suites ported to Linux) and hardware manufacturers (maybe ATI cards will stop sucking, and maybe we'll even see accelerated drivers for the AiW line!). Another benefit is that Micro

IF everyone ran Windows the world would be so much better. Imagine one central repository where everything could be collected, supported, and distributed.

Now think about what you just said if someone from another vantage point said it. Just because its your favorite distro doesn't mean its right for everyone. Multiple vantage points is what keeps linux and the rest of the computing world competitive.

As far as I know, the Ubuntu foundation operates independently of Canonical, Ltd. Canonical could pull all support for Ubuntu in favor of Ubuntu Enterprise Edition (a la Red Hat), but free Ubuntu would live on because Canonical can't take away the Ubuntu Foundation's $10,000,000+ war chest.

You should also note the grandparent's use of the word corporate. Red Hat is indeed a publically traded corporation, while Canonical is a privately held Limited Partnership. There's a big difference between those two when it comes to legal rights, shareholder obligations, and overall evil-ness.

No, Ubuntu is maintained by a non-profit foundation, that gets a lot of funding from a corporation that exists to fund and promote open source software -- not to make money for it's shareholder (not shareholders, since there is only one).

On the other hand, Oracle could want Novell so that they can make Novell no longer back IBM on the SCO vs. IBM case. This would potentially leave Oracle with the only legitimate Linux distribution and stack of enterprise software. It may be an added bonus for Ellison's ego and too sweet an opportunity to pass up.

You're right, can you please post instructions on getting XP to work on a 17" PowerBook G4 and a Sun 10000E... I want a REAL OS (tm) too!!! You dime a dozen MCSE, point-and-click "techies" make me laugh. Bet you'd shit your pants if somebody took your precious precious mouse away. Oh btw, this is 2006, your driver crap logic hasn't been true since the last time Microsoft was over $30 a share.

driver crap isn't true? That's funny, my linksys/cisco card won't load on linux without using windows drivers, and it's till a crapshoot at best going about it that way.

If I had a PowerBook G4, I'd load OSX onto it. If I had a Sun 10000E I'd load Solaris onto it, and you can bet your ass everyone else who bought one will too. Last I checked, when you drop 6 figures on a server you want support.

That being said, your point is moot. Knowing I can run linux on a powerbook doesn't chang ethe fact my wireless doesn't work for shit. YOU are all that is wrong with linux right now. Instead of saying "hey, you're right, that's a problem we really need to fix" it's "well f you, that doesn't matter it's not important because of this and this and this". Stop patting yourself on the back, and stop trying to brush a serious problem under the rug. I can only be happy people like yourself aren't running the show or linux would've never made it out of Linus's dorm room.

Wish I could mod something "needs whitespace"It seems to me that you don't *need* to buy a distro or own a distro, you need in-house expertise. There's no point "buying" an open source company if the engineers etc. leave, and if you hire the engineers then the company is basically dead.

It seems to me that the reason IBM isn't buying distros is that (a) it understands this, and (b) it doesn't need to (because it already has the expertise). What Ellison is revealing by making his statements is that either he